Okay, I am thoroughly ready to give up!!! No matter how hard I tried I could not do ANYTHING except skidded turns this weekend. It was really icy, nearly fell about a dozen times and just could not follow through with my board on turns. Are there certain conditions where you can only board like you are saying I should try to do to begin to scarve? When all that is available is a thin blown layer over ice, how do you NOT skid in those conditions? I was just so frustrated I told my husband let's go home!

What you're doing looks good, and nothing is wrong with skidded turns or scarving. I do think some terrain is better for carving than others, while skidding/scarving is more widely useful.

That said, groomed runs/groomed hardpack is really good terrain for carving. If it's too icy, that's not good (since your board will slip), but if it's just a little softer, it can be great for carving.

I think one issue is that when you learn to carve, you have to be patient with the turn. You let the sidecut of board turn you, and you make these gradual S turns. I think when you carve, you get on an edge, get the appropriate balance, and let the sidecut do the turning. You're doing great linking turns, but if you watch your video, you can probably see that your board makes these sharp direction switches. It's like zig-zagging rather than S turns.

Also, it's definitely good to learn to carve on terrain that's easier for you... some kind of run where you can get good speed, and are not afraid to point the board straight downhill. Carving/S-turns, you will need to have your board pointed downhill longer than with skidded turns.... at least until you learn to get faster edge to edge.

I'll just go ahead and say the last thing I try to do on super icy surfaces is carve... as soon as I get up on my edge at anything over a minor angle my board just wants to kick out. If the conditions were really bad - it's hard to tell from the video because I do see that decent layer on top, mellow skidded turns might have been the best thing.

Your turn initiations were great, I could just see you weren't leaning very hard into your turns probably due to the icyness. Bad conditions suck and have to be ridden accordingly no matter how good you are, so don't get too discouraged.

unless you are riding great conditions on the right terrain you cant help but "skid", you cant expect to leave that pencil line in the snow every time you go out and ride any terrain, hell i do some sort of skid almost all the time just because i ride terrain that isnt conducive to true carving. When you are on solid ice all you can do is crouch down low, and slide sideways praying to god you dont wash out. i rode some pretty bad ice the other night after the sun went down, and i gotta say it was fairly scary and just not any fun. every time i would get going and try to slow down again i would just start sliding unpredictably so i squated low and started swearing to my self. at one point i plowed right into my friend because i couldnt stop in time, it was still pretty funny. it didnt help that i had my detuned park board either, bu oh well. basically i said that if this is what the east coast people got all winter i would shoot myself in the foot so i didnt have to ride it.

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Vicki you were doing just fine...it was a scarving day...you could hear the ice on the vid. There were some folks in the vid that blew past and quickly disappeared....they were closer to carving. But you are not yet comfortable with going that fast...so you scarve...nothing wrong with that...you were clearly in control. You appeared abit uneasy thus rushed the turns and kicked out the rear foot a bit.

Ime perfect carves are hard to come by because you need perfect slope/terrain that is matched for your skill level, that is smooth, with great snow, good visability and nobody in the way; this past Saturday, 2 skier buds and I had three laps late in the day where this occured...the best carving laps so far this year.

This may not apply, but it looks like you're not really getting a steep angle to get up on edge with your turns to initiate the carve. From my perspective you need to get more pressure (weight) onto your edges by getting up on your toes and heels. Bodywise you would want to be really leaning toward the mt and edge you are trying to carve on. In the video you seem to be leaning away from the edge you are turning on.

Video is deceiving but it looks like you may still have the fear of the speed you would gain by carving in those packed conditions, keep riding and you will get used to it. Those were more groomed hard pack than ice from what the video looks like. When you get more experience you will be able to carve on that surface and you will have to have a higher edge angle than what your using too.

You look like your doing good. My wife is at a similar stage of riding....

I also tried to work on my dynamic turns last weekend. Spent the whole weekend up at Snow Summit. Temperature is around 58 degrees, so it is patches of slush that turns to ice in late afternoon.

You seem to have the same problem that I have with the tendency of not angling the board enough when turning and results in having to slightly rudder the board. My problem is that I have the lazy toe, e.g. that I do not engage my toes enough and not bending my knees enough. Once I figured that out and started aggressively flexing my knees my turns became a lot tighter and I don't skid as much.

But I am a newbie So I might just be completely wrong in regards to you.

I guess I'm just not sure how you should ride in certain terrain. I was watching people on the chairlifts and they ALL seemed to be skidding their turns - only saw a few with a pencil line and they were just plain bombing - something I just will not ever want to do. But then just because "everyone" is doing it, doesn't mean they are doing it correctly either. It didn't show in these videos but most of the times I hit an ice spot was on my toe edge - so of course, after that I get very panicky going to my toe edge and thus trying to lean more and get higher on that edge just plain freaks me out. I haven't been in any great conditions this year where there is some snow for you to dig into and make those great turns trying to "scarve" it seems.

So, when it is hard packed groomed like that and makes that awful icy noise, do you just point your board straight down the mountain with quick heel edge turns? Guess I just need to know how to ride in these conditions.

Because of the hard packed I didn't even want to venture anything harder cause with the wind blowing the snow was blowing off and you were left with just ice. Didn't even stay long enough to see if it would soften up.... :-(